"I don't think it's character assassination, but sometimes discussing the finer points of a watch in detail can be a bit like discussing someone else's wife. As in "Yes, she has a beautiful face but she has fat ankles" or "She has a gorgeous figure but she needs to sort out that moustache" - of course as gentlemen watch collectors we would never say, or even think, such things but it makes the point.

A watch can sometimes be as much an emotional investment as a financial one, and evoke all sorts of emotional responses. "

Exaggerated for effect, of course, but in essence true. Probably all of us have been at least a little defensive over our watches, or something similar, in our time.

Equally, a lot of us are also likely to be detail people. The Carrera table we have put together on the main OTD site has over 100 entries. It also has some more to be added. If I see a Carrera that doesn't fit into one of the entries on that table, it arouses my interest. It may also arouse my suspicions, depending on the watch and its provenance.

And sometimes those two approaches can come into conflict. Most of the time it's not intentional; we see an unfamiliar configuration and we want to discuss it, to examine the details, to ask others if they are familiar with it. As Chuck implied, Heuer was not always rational with its decisions over which components to use together - we have lots of examples of watches we consider transitional. From looking at lots of watches, I'm fairly sure Heuer tended to use some hands etc until supplies ran out, even if the watch had been designed with another set of hands - a good way of running a business in terms of maximising use of stock, but also a good way of confusing the collector trying to make sense of it 40 years after the event!

One thing we can do for you is try and narrow the year of production down if you can get the serial number from between the lugs. We don't have Heuer records to go on, but we're putting together as many serials as we can, particularly where we have good details for when the watch was purchased and I think we have a fairly good idea now - though it gets sketchier the earlier we go.